


Provincetown (The All I Ever Wanted Remix)

by pocky_slash



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Disabled Character, Domestic, Established Relationship, M/M, Old mutants in love, Remix, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 03:23:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four places Charles and Erik didn't go on vacation and one place they did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Provincetown (The All I Ever Wanted Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [listerinezero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/listerinezero/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Cape Cod](https://archiveofourown.org/works/390269) by [listerinezero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/listerinezero/pseuds/listerinezero). 



> For **listerinezero**. I know Remix isn't technically a gift-giving exchange, but this is meant as a gift. I hope I've done this verse justice, it's one of my favorites :)

_Paris, 1979_

Erik calls collect, because Erik is an ass.

"Must you reverse the charges?" Charles says. "It's juvenile. The Foundation is paying the hotel bill, the Foundation pays the phone bill at the school, the money all comes from the same place."

"I don't condone this," Erik mutters. His voice sounds tinny over the line.

"No, you're just cranky because you're home alone and I'm out in the city of lights, seeing the sights, the architecture, the loose European men--"

Charles can hear a crash on Erik's end of the line. He refrains from asking after whatever priceless heirloom Erik has destroyed this time.

"You know I can't leave the country and yet you insist--"

"On delivering the keynote address at the most celebrated conference on mutant rights in the world," Charles says. "Yes, I do. It's an honor and it's important and I can't just turn it down because you somehow get lonely spending six nights 'alone' in a house with twenty staff and a handful of summer school occupants. Read a bloody book. I'll be home in less than a week."

"It's not that!" Erik snaps. And then, the fight draining out of him, "It's not that."

Charles can perfectly picture the look on Erik's face, the resignation sketched out in his laugh lines, the slump in his shoulders.

"Darling," he says.

"I've done quite enough sleeping alone," Erik says. "Eighteen months of it."

He doesn't need to elaborate further.

"I'll call you every night," Charles says, his voice soft, the distance suddenly immeasurable, nearly as bad as despair he felt while Erik was in jail. "I'll leave as soon as I can. But I'm here now and I have a job to do."

Erik sighs. Charles has to swallow the sudden lump in his throat.

"We'll go on a proper vacation at the end of the summer," Charles promises. "You and me and somewhere we can drive."

"Fine," Erik says. "I don't care. Fine."

"So, since we're paying for a transatlantic call, you might as well go ahead and tell me about your day," Charles says, and starts scribbling down a list of vacation destinations.

***

_Arizona, 1984_

"This is miserable," Erik announces as he steps out of the rental car.

"Oh, I don't know about that," Charles says, though he privately agrees. Erik calls him a 'delicate flower,' but he's not fond of temperatures above 70 unless he's on the beach and despite the constant refrain that it's a dry heat, he's already wilting.

"And the rental car is a wreck," Erik says. "I can feel how terrible the engine is."

"If all you're going to do is complain--"

Erik rolls his eyes and pushes the car door shut.

"I don't see why we have to do this," he says, changing tactics. "What's the point of having a staff if we can't send them to do the undesirable bits of running a school?" He makes a particular face, as if he's smelled something bad. "Recruitment."

"You used to love recruitment," Charles says, navigating his chair up the path to the front door. "We fell in love over that first recruitment trip. Weeks on the road, sharing motel rooms, staying in bed for hours at a time...."

"And what is it now?" Erik asks. "Three day weekends in the same shitty motels we visited twenty years ago, except we're twenty years older and every night is an exercise in frustration as we try to navigate too narrow hallways and bathrooms. Twenty years ago it was, foolishly or not, an adventure. Now it's routine, a dog and pony show for parents. There's a reason we send the children out to do these things now, and the weather is only part of it."

He scowls up at the sun, as if it's personally offended him. Charles slows and turns around, holding out a hand for Erik to catch as he approaches. Erik stops in front of Charles' chair and takes his hand. He pushes up his sunglasses with the other and first takes in the horizon, then looks down at Charles.

"I have a home now," Erik says finally. "I want to be home."

"Think of it as a vacation?" Charles suggests, squeezing Erik's hand and trying not to let his affection show so baldly on his face. They have to do this. Little Kathy is a powerful empath, but her father is just as powerful a businessman and the headmaster of the Xavier Institute and the president of the Xavier Foundation will speak more to his obsession with status than two junior faculty members. Still, he knows weight of the word "home" to Erik. Even after all these years, it still makes him dizzy to hear Erik say it.

"This isn't a vacation," Erik says. He rubs the back of Charles' hand with his thumb. "I'll expect a real one to make up for this."

"Anything you want, my love," Charles says. He gives Erik's hand one final squeeze and then turns back towards the house. Maybe if this goes quickly, they can skip the shitty motel and be back in New York by tomorrow.

***

_Washington, 1996_

"Sorry, Dr. X, the a/c is broken," is the first thing Paolo, their maintenance man in Washington, says to Charles when he enters the lobby of their apartment building.

"Oh dear," Charles says. A moment later, Erik joins them, pulling their two suitcases behind him, hands free. He's squinting down at the newspaper and only looks up once the door is shut behind him.

"It's a bit warm in here," he says, and glares at Paolo.

"I was just telling Dr. X the air conditioner's busted," Paolo says. "Sorry, man. We're having the guy in to fix it first thing tomorrow. If I'd've known you were coming...." 

Paolo shrugs. Charles knows he normally tries to keep an eye on mutant legislation so he can tell when Charles and Penny will be in town, but this isn't legislation, it's an awards banquet, probably not unlike dozens of other awards banquets that happen on a daily basis in the District. Charles doesn't blame him for not picking it out of the papers.

"It's fine, Paolo," Charles says. "It was a bit unexpected. Thank you for letting us know about the air conditioning."

"You need anything else, you let me know," Paolo says, and disappears around the corner, whistling. 

Charles watches him go.

"No air conditioning," Erik says darkly.

"Apparently."

"In _August_ ," Erik says. "It's _August_ , Charles. 'Come away with me for the weekend,' you said. 'You think I look handsome in my tux,' you said. 'It will just be you and me and we can spend the rest of the weekend in the apartment,' you said. 'It will be a pre-vacation.'"

"The heat will certainly be the same," Charles says. He looks up at Erik and smiles beatifically. Erik is glaring at him.

"Politicians bothering me all night, and all of those ridiculous speeches--yours included, which I've already heard thirteen times now. Do you really need to practice that much? They don't care what you say. It's not like they'll take the award back," Erik says, stalking towards the elevators, pulling their bags behind him with little more than a jerk of his hand. "I am never letting you try to talk me into something after sex again. I'm far too forgiving."

"Of course, dear," Charles says, following dutifully after, knowing full well that's not the first time Erik has made that promise. It probably won't be the last, either, starting with, oh, about two hours from now, when he talks Erik into running down to the deli to get them sandwiches for a post-coital lunch.

***

_Berkshires, 2003_

"Mountains," Charles says distastefully.

"Your idea," Erik says. "We could be halfway to the Cape right now."

"We were invited," Charles says. "It's only polite."

"This woman has tried to kill us on multiple occasions," Erik reminds him. "How does Emily Post feel about _that_?"

She would still probably encourage them to attended Emma Frost's engagement party, Charles thinks. Post was dreadfully old fashioned. 

"We've all tried to kill each other at times," Charles says. "Why, just this morning, when I noticed you'd forgotten to change the toilet paper again, I contemplated homicide."

Erik snorts, but before he can offer a retort, Charles stops short and lurches forward. 

"Dammit!" he hisses. He glances down to the rock stuck in his wheel, and then up at Erik. "Could you?" The metal bracket that pivots the right front wheel elongates and a rock clatters to the ground, after which the metal melts back into place as if nothing had happened. "Thank you very much," Charles says.

"You should have brought the motorized chair," Erik says as Charles goes back to pushing himself up the rather monstrous hill that Emma's mountain cottage is perched on.

"You know it's even worse on gravel than this," Charles says. "You could always give me a push."

And just like that, the wheels are turning of their own volition, propelling Charles up the path smoothly.

"I was only waiting for you to ask," Erik says. "Although I still think we should turn around and head back to the highway. Emma Frost isn't worth our time, nor is whatever man she's tricked into marrying her."

"Hush," Charles says, although he privately agrees. He does like Emma--mostly. Emma was a godsend all those years ago, during Erik's incarceration, and she's still the only person he'll go to with certain problems and gripes that come hand-in-hand with telepathy. He can't speak so frankly to some of the faculty--they were all his students once. Still, Emma takes her status seriously and her parties tend towards extravagant. The gala she threw for the anniversary of the inclusion of mutants in her school even put most of Charles' mother's parties to shame. This was supposed to be the start of their three weeks on the Cape and, damn her, he's rather sure Emma knew that when she scheduled it.

It's only polite to put in an appearance, though. No matter how much Charles hates the mountains. And Erik hates Emma.

"Eventually," Erik says, mostly to himself, as they approach the door, "we're going to reach an age when you will stop using sex to talk me into things."

"We've been together forty-one years, my love," Charles says. "All previous evidence proves otherwise. Smile, be kind, and tell Emma you're happy for her."

"How does she still look like that?" Erik asks. "Is it part of her mutation?"

Charles thinks mournfully of his hair.

"Who knows," he says.

Erik leans over and kisses the top of his head.

"You're still very sexy," Erik assures him, and though Charles doesn't doubt it--there had been some serious soul-searching when Charles first lost his hair back in the seventies, and quite a bit of reassurance by Erik that Charles was still beautiful--he sees it for the jab it is.

"We'll leave after the toasts," he promises Erik.

"We're staying an extra day in Massachusetts," Erik says. "This is work--it's not vacation."

"Fine," Charles says. "Now, ring the bell and smile."

***

_Cape Cod, 2012_

The sun wakes Charles as it moves across his pillow and into his eyes. He blinks at the light and turns his head to bury his face in Erik's shoulder.

"What time is it?" he asks.

"Early, yet," Erik assures him. "Do you want to get up?"

Charles raises his head and wipes the sleep out of his eyes. It's early morning in the bright white of the bedroom in Provincetown. He can hear the ocean and Erik is in bed next to him, calm in a way he never is anywhere else in the world, book propped open on his chest. He has reading glasses perched on the top of his head. He looks...well, he looks like an old man. A beautiful old man. They're both old. They've grown old together, they have a school and a life and a family together. They own this house together, and for the next three weeks, they have no one to answer to except each other. Charles can sleep as long as he wants and when he wants to get up and go to the beach, he can. He'll eat a lobster roll for lunch while Erik complains about shellfish as if it's religion holding him back and not personal distaste. They'll see which of their other summer friends are around and Erik will make dinner from any number of recipes he's been saving up all year. They'll pass the hours reading and watching television and watching the waves and still--after fifty years--making love.

This is their life. It's been their life for all these years, and today is just another day, precious in its mundanity, perfect in how ordinary it is.

Erik strokes his fingers slowly up and down Charles' back.

To think how differently his life could have turned out.

"No, I think I'll stay in bed, yet," he says to Erik. He tugs on Erik's t-shirt. "And I think you should come down here and kiss me."

Erik's amusement is a warm spot in his mind, another brightness to the day.

"Whatever for?" he asks.

"Because you're here," Charles says.

"Of course I am," Erik says, leaning down for that kiss. "It's our vacation. There's nowhere else I'd rather be."


End file.
